


Put Your Glasses on and Face the Truth

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Arrogance, Buffy is the Chosen One, Buffy is the boss, Buffy is the hero, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s02e22 Becoming Part 2, Episode: s05e22 The Gift, Episode: s07e17 Lies My Parents Told Me, Gen, It's About Power, Lessons learned, Murderers, Presumption, Spoilers, alternate scene deleted from canon, heros, how wars are won, killers, my interpretation of canon characters, pet peeves, referenced canon character death, the definition of "person", the student surpassing the master
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 12:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3119855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles tries to teach Buffy a lesson.  Fortunately, no one dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put Your Glasses on and Face the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> This idea of the partially deleted scene of Giles telling Buffy that he killed Ben while Robin is supposed to be killing Spike has been gnawing at me ever since I heard about it on the DVD commentary to Lies My Parents Told Me. Something I read today stuck one more burr under the same saddle, which was one more than I could stand and voila! Fanfic.

“I  _killed_ Ben,” Giles repeated insistently, having no respect at all for Buffy's ability to act as if she hadn't heard him or as if it didn't matter. “I murdered him while he was lying there, helpless, unable to move.”

“Yeah,” Buffy tried another tack, “but you're _not_ a murder.” Like me, she guiltily didn't add. “I mean, it was Ripper you, right? Not you you.”

Giles sighed and rubbed his eyes one last time before putting his glasses on and looking Buffy square in the eye. “There is only me, Buffy,” he said firmly. “Ripper isn't a demon or a split personality. It's a nickname. One that once suited me rather well, though probably not during the period when I most relished being called that. But I am still the same person I was when that name fit and I'm still the same person I was when I longed to fit it. I know different things and have different opinions now, that's all. I have more respect for the value of human life for a start. And I am telling you that with that respect fully in place and with that value in mind I made, a deliberate, rational decision to take a human life and carried it out with my own two hands. Do you know why?”

“Cuz it was the only way to prevent a crazy Hellgod from reemerging and rampaging throughout the land wreaking vengeance upon all humanity for my act of trapping her in a reality she despised?” Buffy mock-guessed the obvious and only answer, smiling chipperly, trying to lighten the mood a little, to let him know that she honestly did understand. That he didn't have to brood and suffer and make a big deal. Giles blinked, a little disconcertedly, as if he truly hadn't expected her to get the reason at all.

Buffy's heart dropped a little and she felt herself getting mad, indignant, suddenly making sense of the Watcherly pomposity with which he'd been 'instructing' her all evening. “Wow,” she said, turning away from his puzzled gaze, perfunctorally killing the vampire who was dividing the attention that they both so clearly needed to focus exclusively on this conversation. If Giles had any thought of objecting to her disregard of his explicit instructions about that little exercise, the tone of Buffy's voice stopped his tongue. “All this time... all these years... you're just sitting there thinking... I mean you actually believe...?” Her voice broke with emotion and she took a moment to wipe away a few bitter tears before continuing.

“I _killed_ Angel!” Buffy all but shouted, through gritted teeth, choking back something that could have been a scream or a sob. “I told him to close his eyes.” It was a sob, and she couldn't speak without letting it come. “I knew he would, because he loved me.” Buffy's words were being squeezed out of her in the wheezes between her sobs now until she was nearly choking on them. “Because he trusted me. I knew he wouldn't ask me why.” Her tears were coming faster and faster, but she didn't bother to wipe them away. What was the point? Of any of it. If he seriously couldn’t understand by now that she wasn't just some dumb little girl with super powers who needed to be taught a textbook lesson about the importance of making difficult choices.

After all the risky, violent, messy, horrible, disgusting things she'd had to do in her short/long lifetime to save the world, what exactly was it that he thought was so much harder about making the entirely and obviously necessary decision to kill a man he barely knew, a man who had kidnapped and would have killed Dawn, a man who— _A Man!_ ”

Few monsters and far fewer men had been looked upon with the gaze that Rupert Giles suddenly faced. Almost none of either had lived to tell the tale. But Buffy didn't waste another instant on him, not a blow, not a word, not a backward glance. She had to get to Spike before it was too late. She had to stop a murder. Or, more likely, the death of a man.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Like all good fanfiction, this work is written for love and not for money and fits within the definition of fair use and/or parody in the law of copy right.


End file.
